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Jun 22, 2024

MIT’s new 3D shadow models can help autonomous vehicles drive better

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Reconstructing a scene using a single-camera viewpoint is challenging. Researchers have deployed generative artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve this. However, the models can hallucinate objects when determining what is obscured.

An alternate approach is to use shadows in a color image to infer the shape of the hidden object. However, the method falls short when the shadows are hard to see.

To overcome these limitations, the MIT researchers used a single-photon LiDAR. A LiDAR emits pulses of light, and the time it takes for these signals to bounce back to the sensor creates a 3D map of a scene.

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